


this moment to ourselves

by frederickdesvoeux (doomdxys)



Category: The Terror (TV 2018), The Terror - Dan Simmons
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode Tag, First Shot a Winner Lads, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-27 21:05:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21398632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doomdxys/pseuds/frederickdesvoeux
Summary: Edward watches everyone start to leave the captain's cabin, his own feet unwilling to leave, the gun anchoring him to the table. James is still there, reading him like a book. They're tired and everything just has to be on their shoulders.(Post-1.05, Edward and James get some alone time, and Edward can't help but worry over everything whilst missing the past.)
Relationships: Commander James Fitzjames/Lt Edward Little
Comments: 4
Kudos: 25
Collections: The Terror Rarepair Week 2019





	this moment to ourselves

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the rarepair week and the terror bingo (prompt: 1.05 First Shot a Winner Lads) ! 
> 
> Set post-1.05, right after the end scene with Crozier. Any mistakes are because this was edited on the go.

Edward watches them all leave the cabin, tired and confused at everything that had transpired. He should follow, he has to follow, the captain’s cabin has not suddenly become his, but instead he watches the gun in front of him. Abandoned and unwanted, just like all of them and his face twists at the foul metaphor. 

James’ fingers are soft on his, a quiet rebuke that James doesn’t intend to Edward’s feelings of being unwanted and lonely. He watches James’ thumbs rub circles into his gloves, feels the cold seeping through them. It’s easier not to talk—to not break the moment. He knows that if he acknowledges James, James will have to leave eventually.

He lets James drag him upwards and out of the cabin towards his own. His legs have become separate entities, he can see them move but not a single part of him is aware of them moving. The gun, he thinks as they step outside the door, but it shines in the lamplight, dangling from James’ free hand, as he looks down at the corridor floor. Of course James remembered. 

The light is already on in his own cabin, bathing the room is a warm orange glow that makes Edward want to sleep for days on end, James wrapped around him. It makes him miss England—home. The certainty of James coming to visit him a light in the winter days. 

“Edward?” He comes back from his memories of forty-four, James’ voice reminding him that they’re very much still a thing, even if they are stuck in the arctic. He lets himself be seated on the bed, entirely dressed and too tired to change anything about that. His hands seem indefinitely more interesting than James’ face and he pokes at a hole in one of his gloves until James’ hands force themselves into the motion. 

“I’m tired,” he hears himself say, more towards the floor than James. 

“I know.” James crouches down in front of Edward, pulling the gloves off his hands gently and barely turning to put them away. It feels good to feel James’ fingers on his hands again, even if the man can’t take his own gloves off. It’s a painful reminder of their actual lives.

Edward finds it in himself to look up, his own tiredness mirrored in James’ eyes. “What are we doing, James?” It’s a question he doubts either of them know the answer to—surviving? Trying? Occasionally the answer feels like it’s living, by the skin of their teeth and in a numbness that might never leave their bones if they make it out. When they make it out, he doesn’t correct himself.

No answer comes, James merely moving his hands to Edward’s cheeks. The wool pulls on his beard as it tangles and gets stuck each time James’ thumbs caress his cheek. He leans into it nonethenless, desperate to find a semblance of home in their actions, to forget that the ship creaks around them and people walk past. 

The kiss is soft, almost painfully so as James tentatively pushes against his lips. It’s been too long since they were alone—since Edward could run his hands through James’ hair and melt into the soft caresses. It’s a comfort they desperately need and Edward nearly sinks off the bed and onto floor as he tries to crawl under James’ skin. 

“Stay,” he whispers as he hangs forwards awkwardly, all of his weight resting on James’ kneeling figure like a twisted metaphor for their mental state. His hands slide from James’ hair to his neck, forcing themselves under the layers of uniform. The heartbeat is steady under his fingers, a calming force that he wants to keep close. 

“They need me on Erebus.” Another kiss—slower, stickier and Edward slides out of the bed onto his knees as he tries to keep them together. James laughs, the first time that day, and mostly at Edward’s blushing as he tries to settle himself in the small space between James’ knees and the bed. 

“I miss you,” Edward says in the silence after James’ laugh. He wishes they were wearing less clothes, that he could run his hands over the scars adorning James’ body and remember all they’d had before. Maybe he’s scared to die forgetting what James feels like after all, a thought he’s tried to repress for months, but he knows it’s getting harder to recall everything—from the freckle on James’ left shoulder to the way his back dips when he stretches his arms above his head.

“I know.” James starts pushing Edward’s coat off his shoulders, a silent start of the end of their time together. Edward shrugs it off quietly; he could pick it up in the morning, like a sad reminder of times when a coat on the floor meant happier things. 

James gets up first and Edward lets himself be pulled up a second time that evening, being pushed back onto the bed with an accompanying “you should get some rest, Ned”. James worries, about the wrong things, if Edward is concerned. They can’t rest—not with the entire expedition in James’ hands and Edward suddenly having to take care of a tilting ship. 

It’s like his thoughts are written on his face, James’ fingers—occupied with unbuttoning Edward’s vest—coming to stop and James looks up at him, his expression entirely open and Edward has to squint for a hint of worry. “We can make it through this,” he says, hands flat against Edward’s chest, “and, i will see you again. There’ll be time for better.”

There’ll be time for better, Edward repeats to himself as James’ hands find his face again after pushing the vest off his shoulders. 

“Stop pouting,” James mumbles, his thumb running across Edward’s bottom lip. He smiles but fails to hide the tiredness in his eyes. Edward barely tries to return it before James kisses him again, quickly, a goodbye that neither of them want to say. So they don’t, James quietly leaving the cabin and with it, Edward to his thoughts of better days as he tries to go to sleep. There’ll be time for better. 

**Author's Note:**

> http://tobmenzies.tumblr.com/


End file.
